Focus on Process and People

Business owners, firm leaders, and managers love to ask us our?opinion on which CRM is the best. Our response always catches people?by surprise: Your best CRM is your internal people, processes, and?data, because CRM is not about a piece of technology.

Strong leaders?know CRM permeates every aspect of a business and every employee?plays a vital role in the success or failure of CRM. We know you want?the answer to be simple and for us to provide you with the name of?a technology tool or platform to maximize your CRM, but there is no?such thing as an “Easy” button when it comes to client relationship?management!

Even so, there are great CRM products and support tools available.?However, they will only be successful if you create the proper foundation?by first focusing on internal processes. Professional service firms?are in the business of relationships, and it is vital to nurture the relationships?we have built, in addition to gaining new ones.

To do this?well, every staff member must have three things from the senior leaders?of the company.

1. A well-defined CRM process that is easy to follow and is supported?from the top down.?
2. A clear understanding of how data drives business and how leaders?use it in their decision-making.?
3. A set of well-defined CRM expectations they are held accountable?to on a regular basis.

Our Hope and Future Vision

It is our sincere desire that our book CRM or Die will empower professional service leaders with a clear path forward, regardless of where you currently find yourself on your CRM journey.

When we meet with C-Suite leaders, the common thing we hear is, “I do not know what I do not know. You are the expert, so tell me what I do not know.” After you finish reading this book, you will never again wonder, “What do I not know about CRM?”

Combined, we have helped hundreds of professional service firms implement, maintain, or improve their CRM processes and systems. We want to add you and your firm to our list of clients who have navigated this topic, and we are here to support, empower, and lead you to success.

The future we envision has every AEC employee starting their day logging into an integrated CRM solution, which we define as a firm-wide system that is integrated into the flow of data to capture company, contact, pursuit, and project information to support managing client relationships, internal processes, and asset management.

Once logged in, the employees are greeted with a fully automated company brief showing how they are doing on their goals, what data has changed since they last logged in or last reviewed the data, and the top trends in the company-specific data analytics. Everyone in the firm can read these comprehensive data stories because there is a well-defined process in place that everyone is dedicated to, resulting in a perfect dataset that always stays up to date. The chief data officer has developed a culture of data stewardship, empowering each member to use data to drive their decisions no matter their role in the company.

This creates an industry that values data as a renewable asset and uses it proactively for predictive analysis, which positively affects our businesses and each employee.

We have dedicated a good portion of our careers to improving the management of client relationships. Put our experience to good use and benefit from our lessons learned, our expertise, and best practices. Let us share our love for data with you.

We are confident that by the time you finish this book, you will view data as one of your company’s most valuable assets, and you will insist that your firm prioritize the process and people behind your client relationship management!

This article is an overview of chapter one of CRM or Die: Manage Your Client Relationships or Perish by Courtney Kearney and Chaz Ross-Munro.